GOP Rep Issues Prediction On Benghazi 'Whistle Blowers'

[HuffingtonPost]

WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) - A top Republican on Sunday  said he expected more witnesses to step forward with information  about last year's deadly attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi  and how President Barack Obama's administration responded to the  unfolding events.                

"I do think we're going to see more whistle blowers. I  certainly know my committee has been contacted," Representative  Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said  in an interview on "Fox News Sunday".                

Last week, Republican charges that White House covered up  details of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack gathered more steam after  former U.S. diplomat Greg Hicks told lawmakers he believed more  could have been done to stop the assault by suspected Islamist  militants.                

Hicks, the second in command at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at  the time, expressed his frustration in an emotionally charged  congressional hearing that a U.S. military jet and special  forces were not sent to help in Benghazi.                

A report by ABC News provided additional momentum to the  highly partisan flap over whether the administration tried to  avoid casting the attack as terrorism at a time when the  presidential election was less than two months away.                

ABC released 12 versions of the administration's "talking  points" on Benghazi that appeared to show how various agencies -  particularly the State Department and the CIA - shaped what  became the Obama administration's initial playbook for  explaining how four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador  Christopher Stevens, were killed in the attack.                

The report showed the final talking points went through a  series of revisions that scrubbed references to previous terror  warnings, including one regarding the potential threat from al  Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya.                

"I would call it a cover-up in the extent that there was  willful removal of information," Senator John McCain, an Arizona  Republican, said on ABC's "This Week".                

McCain called for a select congressional committee with a  mandate to interview "everybody," including former Secretary of  State Hillary Clinton, who has already testified before Congress  on the matter and accepted responsibility for the tragedy.                

But McCain's call was brushed off by fellow Republican  Representative Darrell Issa, who chairs the House of  Representatives Oversight and Government committee that heard  from Hicks last week.                

"You know, let's not blow things out of proportion. This is  a failure, it needs to be investigated. Our committee can  investigate," Issa said.                

Issa said he would be sending a request on Monday to  privately depose two former U.S. officials that headed the  Accountability Review Board, which investigated the Benghazi  attacks and issued a scathing report on Dec. 18 that criticized  security at the mission and leadership "deficiencies".                

Issa said he wanted to hear from Thomas Pickering, a former  U.S. ambassador in the Middle East, Russia and India, and  retired Admiral Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint  Chiefs of Staff, privately "so we can get the facts in a  nonpartisan way."                

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, told ABC News  there was no basis to Republican charges of a cover up.                

The Obama administration has provided over 25,000 pieces of  documentation to Congress, which has already held 11 hearings on  the matter, Reed said.                

Meanwhile, Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a  Republican who served in Obama's Democratic administration, told  CBS' "Face the Nation" it would have been "very difficult, if  not impossible" to rescue the U.S. embassy officials and said he  would have not have approved such an operation.                

"To send some small number of special forces or other troops  in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what  the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what  is actually going on the ground, I think would have been very  dangerous," Gates said.                

"It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military  capabilities and military forces" to think the United States  could have mounted a rescue, Gates said.                

It would have been risky just to send in a military jet to  try to scare off the insurgents, "given the number of  surface-to-air missiles" on the loose in Libya, he said.         (Reporting by Doug Palmer, Douwe Miedema and David Brunnstrom)

Via: HuffingtonPost